Being here

Caisteal Abhail and Ceum na Caillich
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Being here has always mattered more
than where I’m going. So.
To be aware of the elusive scent
of myrtle in the sun, to catch
the distant gleam of wet rock
in the corrie’s dark recess,
to note the brown swirl of the timeless burn
- all this erodes its own path,
creates a time-worn journey in my soul,
a path to which I turn without a thought
of where it all might end.
The upturned wings glide overhead
- a whisper passing in the breeze –
and if I never know I have arrived
so be it. I am here.

©C.M.M. 07/12

You can find this poem with the view I was seeing when the first sentence came into my head here, though in many ways it is more applicable to the place in this photo, where I have often stopped instead of climbing further. Because of the rules of Blipfoto, I couldn't use this pic for the entry.

Of crows (or not) and sinews

Another improbably lovely morning in Glen Rosa as the early clouds melt and a hot sun shines on the garden - a totally private and sheltered place by virtue of the enormous rhododendrons that surround it. Yesterday was spent, you might say, on the doorstep - if doorsteps can extend for about 5 miles and climb several hundred feet and take over seven hours to traverse! For those unfamiliar with the terrain, Glen Rosa is a perfect glaciated valley rising through its length to a well-defined saddle which separates it from Glen Sannox. That saddle is where we ate our picnic yesterday, as two large black birds - crows? ravens? - shambled over the rocks or swished overhead so close that we could hear the wind in their feathers. I think they might have been disappointed when we rose from a post-prandial snooze against a huge rock; they may have been looking forward to a mid-afternoon snack...

I was alarmed by the fact that my tendons seem to have gone like perished elastic since I last louped down this glen; the recently sprained ankle certainly made life more precarious despite the fact that it held up until the last stretch near the Garbh Allt. I found myself quoting Hamlet: And now my sinews, bear me stiffly up ...

This morning, they are merely stiff. And I have a blister on the ball of my foot. But I have already slipped into the Arran mode of not caring too much about eating out, not caring that shorts don't really do much for my looks any more, and I think today will involve another picnic and another walk. Seaside today, I think .... Blackwaterfoot? King' Caves? The wonderful butcher in the village?

Life's hard, innit?

Home, home ... In the glen

It's an odd feeling to be here - and an annoying feeling not to be able to send a photo of here to the blog: for some reason, despite an excellent signal, my phone has decided it can't cope with blogs and I don't have a lead for my camera here. Ah well. Aficionados of Glen Rosa, on Arran, can visualise for themselves the small white cottage to the right of the track, just before the campsite - the last house in the glen as you head for the Garbh Allt and the hills. And we are here, for a week.

I've been sitting outside on the wooden seat against the white-painted stone wall of this old cottage listening the the birds and the silence that enfolds their song. Last night, on a final visit to the garden in the gloaming, I found a rabbit calmly cleaning his paws, and this morning early there were two of them wetting their bottoms on the dew. (Actually I think it rained a bit in the night, but dew sounds more poetic) The Dutch Venture Scouts who were camping by the burn below us were admirably silent in the night, and by the time we surfaced this morning had folded their tents and stolen away. The summit of Goatfell, just visible from the garden gate, is clear and the morning calm.

What is so amazing for me is the sensation of living halfway to one of my favourite places, in the middle of the surroundings that sum up all I love about Arran. In a moment I shall make some coffee and take it out to that bench, and then we shall potter down to Brodick in search of a paper (no, not that paper). A spot of lunch, then off to walk another glen; we'll save the length of Glen Rosa for a day when we feel more energetic. In the meanwhile, I shall enjoy just being here.

And there's Wifi in the cottage. Joy!

Christie in a country house?

Having gone on about the storm brewing last night, I had to use this pic to demonstrate the hazards of life in these parts at this season - for are we not just out of the octave of the equinoctial gales? It was taken through the car windscreen as we sat on the Western Ferries coming home this morning, having forgone breakfast in our lovely hotel on Arran to catch the first ferry to run, just in case it was also the last.

But it is really of last night that I wish to tell. For after dinner, as we sat deep in squashy leather sofas beside a log fire, we were joined first by three jolly golfers and then by a couple from The South - all of us due to catch the ferry on the morn. I suppose it was the laptop that brought us together, as we could all see for ourselves the expected wind speeds on the met office site and the Cal Mac status reports. Mr B and I were modestly sipping espresso and nibbling the wonderful sweetmeats thoughtfully provided with it (just in case we perhaps had a tiny corner left), but the malt was flowing and the banter becoming more hilarious when we heard that the last boat of the day had been cancelled, and the first of Saturday, and the boat was lying overnight in Brodick. No-one knew if it would sail in the morning, and remarks like "It depends on who the captain is" did nothing to reassure.

It was, of course, typical Agatha Christie fare: the country house; the sense of isolation, of being cut off from the outside world; the contrast between the soft lighting and warmth and the howling darkness outside; the occasional interruption as some windswept traveller, gleaming with water, burst in at the door. One of our number would surely be dead by morning, in mysterious circumstances. Questions about occupation revealed a surgical instrument maker in our midst ... a banker ... an accountant ... surely there were sinister implications here?

Actually, no. At least four of us caught the first ferry together, having survived the night and the anxiety. But I caught no further glimpse of the Jolly Golfers. Perhaps they decided to stay and have that last game in the gale. I do hope so ...

Ancient Mariners again

Sometimes they get the weather forecast just right. And so it is today: they promised us gales overnight and into Saturday, and as I sit by the log fire in the hotel, after a wonderful meal, the wind is howling in the chimney and the talk is all of the cancelled Cal Mac sailings tonight and in the morning. And we're supposed to be leaving tomorrow afternoon. My attention keeps being drawn to the mutterings at the desk, where I can hear anxious conversations about trying to leave by earlier ferries, checking out at the usual time whatever, and I'm trying to concentrate on not fretting.

It feels strange being on such a large island and still depending so completely on Cal Mac ferries. I read in the Arran Banner today that Western Ferries are interested in starting a link here - what a Good Thing that would be. But we'll have to see what the morning brings. A guy in the bar has just opined that it's going to be a rammy in the morning.

Interesting, huh?

Still climbing after all these years ...

As I write, my legs moan quietly: were you wise? My feet feel ... stressed, and my knees, especially the right one, feel as if someone has put cotton-wool in where the cartilage was. And I don't care. Today - this morning especially - the sun shone, and from first light I could see Goat Fell above the woods round our hotel. I swear it was calling me. We had intended to walk the length of Glen Rosa, climb to the Saddle, come down again. Safer, really, in the light of the fact that we'd forgotten to pack the map I'd carefully looked out. Don't want to get caught mapless on the tops if the mist comes down ...

But the bright blue of this morning killed off these cautions, sensible notions, replacing them with the urge to be up there, among the grey rocks and the spase brown grass, the granite gravel and the peaty pools. And so it came to pass that we drove to Corrie, left the car on the shore road, and started up the relentless slope which leads you onto the hill at the White Water, on into the corrie, and up the last, lung-busting slope to the wonderful ridge that joins Goatfell to North Goatfell. By the time we got up - it took us a very respectable 21/4 hours - the wind was biting, bringing the temperature (11ºC at sea level) down to a level which had us piling on every stitch of clothing, right down to my Obama for President woolly hat.

But I cared about that as little as I cared about the sense or otherwise of this day. What I cared about were the deer that walked elegantly by as we ate our lunch - five lesser ones and a magnificent stag who stopped as I bleeped my camera open, posed haughtily, and trotted effortlessly off up the summit slope of N. Goatfell. What I cared about was the wonderful roaring of the stags, still obivously at it far below in Glen Sannox. What I cared about was the rough granite beneath my boots and the great view of the Arran peaks - Cir Mhor, the Castles - all slightly below me where I braced myself against the wind to take photos.

We took the downward path carefully, out of deference to the aging knees (balance the thought of the years knocked off them with the encouragement to "keep going" handed out by every medic we ever talk to). We were shocked by a sudden shot as we crossed the corrie, and I thought of another stag I had spotted as we climbed it earlier in the day and hoped whoever it was had been a good shot. We also hoped they wouldn't think we were anything other than tired walkers.

The whole day took us just over 5 hours - so close to the timings of our past that I felt ... well, smug, actually. A good late birthday present, to get up there where I first climbed 58 years ago and live to tell the tale. Life in the old legs yet, I'd say!

Note: Here be photos

All this, and Heaven too ....

There are some things we have to do in life which almost no-one else understands. My have-to is to return ever so often to the island of Arran, and once there, to walk up Glen Sannox - one of the most perfect glaciated valleys I have ever seen. Today, to mark my birthday, I did these things. And it didn't actually matter that every now and again the cliffs of The Saddle were hidden by drifting curtains of rain, nor that I wasn't actually going to climb these cliffs through the secret key - an eroded whin stone dyke through which my younger self has clambered to emerge triumphant on the broad slabs of the col between the glens Sannox and Rosa.

Right now I am enjoying the free Wi-fi in the bar of the fairly luxurious hotel where I'm staying, as the log fire glows and murmers beside me and the wonderful dinner I ate an hour or so ago begins to sink slightly. But as we walked down the glen this aftenoon, the bellowing and belching sounds of rutting stags dying in the purple and brown hillside on the far side of the burn, I reflected on how the natural ending to such a day would have been, perhaps, a boiled egg and a floury muffin with strawberry jam - or, more recently, spag bol and a slug of red from a winebox followed by the sleep of the just as the sun set and the telly muttered unnoticed in a holiday cottage. For I have been visiting this island for the past 63 years, and in all that time this will be the first night I have spent in a hotel, the first time I have not had to find the food at the end of a day in the hills.

And yes, as I mark the passing of another year (with champagne, and foi gras, and partridge, and free wifi, and Arran Aromatics in the shower) I think that I could go back to the days of boiled eggs and muffins - and being seven, and having all life to look forward to. But that would be incredibly sentimental, wouldn't it?

PS: Photos will follow on Flickr, but right now I'm too comatose to find my phone, and I don't have my camera lead with me ...

Nectar in a tin

I'm indebted to Neil for reminding me of the drink that was the mainstay of my childhood. Creamola Foam must have been a cheap alternative to the red cola and fizzy orange that appeared at parties and on holiday visits to cafés, but my main memory of drinking it is very clear - so clear that I can taste it now - and strongly linked to one place. That place is on Arran, at a point in North Glen Sannox (not to be confused with Glen Sannox, but a less-well-known glen slightly to the north) where huge slabs of pale grey granite jut out into the very middle of the North Sannox burn. This is still one of my favourite places on earth, and will forever be associated with what would be a typical 1950s picnic: Macvitas, triangles of Dairylea cheese, floury muffins with strawberry jam, slightly flattened from their sojurn in a rucksack - and Creamola Foam, preferably orange flavour, made in a plastic tumbler with water scooped precariously from the burn.

This was Creamola Foam at its best, and it's easy to see why it was a winner for whoever was carrying the drinks: a small tin and a spoon make for much less of a load than a bottle of diluted squash. Perhaps the location explains why I recall it with such fondness, for I am now convinced that in my childhood we never drank anything like enough water and at the end of a muddy walk we'd be parched with a thirst that made this chemical concoction into nectar.

To the best of my recollection, we never bought this stuff for my own kids - though I'm open to correction if they ever read this - because I have a feeling I tasted it in later life and realised my tastes had moved on. Just as well, really - it doesn't seem to exist these days.

Update: Neil assures me I did indeed buy it for him - he wouldn't have mentioned it otherwise.

A day in Paradise

Last view of upper glen
Originally uploaded by goforchris.

Yesterday, the weather doing what it had said on the tin, I paid a visit to my bit of Paradise. By 11am we were on the road up Glen Rosa on Arran; I wasn't sure how far we could reasonably expect to walk before turning back to catch the last ferry but like the reasonably fit maniacs that we are we made it to The Saddle, which you can see as the dip at the head of the glen in the photo, with the dramatic V of Ceum na Cailleach behind it. Both Glen Rosa and Glen Sannox, which rises to the other side of the Saddle, are perfect examples of glaciated valleys, with the jagged peaks which make the Arran hills so special rising above the smooth U-shapes of the glens.

This was the first time I'd walked in Arran so early in the year, and I was very struck by the difference in Glen Rosa, a place I know as well as any on earth. The usual soft green of the boggy grass and the blog myrtle had instead the appearance of a dry savannah -and we saw deer on the far side of the burn who might as well have been springbok; they seemed to be more dun-coloured than the red I would expect and were almost invisible. The vital ingredient of the scent of bog myrtle was also missing, as the tiny yellow flowers only smell if rubbed.

What I love about this place is its unchanging nature. The village of Brodick is different in feel from the village of my childhood - bleak hotels, the Douglas with its windows boarded up, the village beach much stonier and the grass behind it encroaching on the dunes - but from the moment you pass the war memorial you could be back in the '50s. As for the glen, the only difference is the path - we didn't have to skip through dub and mire in the old way, thanks to the National Trust. (The plaque made sure we knew who dunnit)

I've taken about 60 photos of the day, which you can see here. I must have more photos of Arran than of any other place on earth, but not digital ones. I was indulging myself in every way. I could almost convince myself that my knees still had some bounce in them - almost. It was a perfect day. 'Nuff said.